The Thing in the Valley
by Charon the Sabercat
Summary: It was all the worst parts of them and the humans. Heatwave wondered if It knew that. Rescue Bots universe.
1. Day

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 1: Doctor's Check Up

Disclaimer: If it's in this story, I don't own it.

* * *

The hangar rang with the tones of falling metal, parts clanking carelessly against the table, bouncing off elbows and bellies, just barely avoiding the tiny human head underfoot. Not on purpose, mind you, Ratchet just couldn't find time to care about the little team's pet human ("Cody," said Blades) while he had a patient on the table. Parts fell where they wanted to fall, and preferably, they fell within his peripheral vision. If the human ("Cody," said Blades) wanted to stay in the danger zone, that was his problem.

Blades was just happy to have someone to talk to who wasn't grumpy, wasn't a superior officer, wasn't a hero of the Cybertron Wars, and wasn't elbow deep in his internals. Cody ("The human?" said Ratchet. "Right.") was good company while the rest of his team flocked around Optimus Prime. Their internals were already cleaned or replaced. Optimus Prime kept them occupied with stories while Ratchet did his work. Blades, in turn, kept Cody occupied with his version of what had happened that day.

"... and that's when all the sand got in," Blades finished, wincing automatically as Ratchet wrenched his main gyroscope out of his back. Cody flinched full on, covering his eyes as Ratchet dropped the gritty, greasy component between Blades's legs. It fell down to the floor, but Cody couldn't see where exactly from between Blades's shoulder and neck. The helicopter smiled a tiny grin, being careful not to nudge Cody accidentally. "Sorry about that, again."

"Doc Greene meant well," said Cody. His hands fell away while Ratchet cleaned the sand out of Blades's spinal struts. "It wasn't your fault, he just did the wrong stitching. Punching bags are hard to make."

Ratchet made an unhappy noise and flexed his fingers. The gears within crunched, gummed up with the sand he'd been digging out of the Rescue Bots for the last 3 hours. Ground bridge him away from important work in Jasper for this... "Stupid humans and their stupid festivals..."

Cody nodded, "The Boxing Festival isn't exactly my favorite either." He gave Blades a fond smile. "But like I told Boulder, at least we're all prepared for the Sandcastle Festival next week!"

Heatwave, having heard Cody make that same stupid joke three times before, growled in agony from the other room. Ratchet laughed at the fire truck's discomfort and began to install Blades's new gyroscope. Cody hopped across Blades's neck and onto his chest, watching Ratchet work from a new vantage point. The medic's fingers were constantly moving, always touching something even if it wasn't the part being worked on, checking temperature and location and tension of the various parts.

The top of the gyroscope clinked into place with a spurt of energon. Cody had quickly grown used to the sight of his friends's bright blue "blood", as odd as it seemed now that he thought about it. Something about it, maybe its bright color and its oddly burnt smell, removed the initial "gross" factor he felt whenever he saw Heatwave bleed for the first time. It reminded Cody that he was sitting on something amazing and otherworldly, not just one of Doctor Greene's crazy inventions. These were his robots aliens in disguise.

Ratchet reached into his subspace and came away with a handful of dirt. It was the purest soil Ratchet could make, all organic compounds, no sand or silicon, which he used to collect energon spills like Charlie Burns did with oil stains and sawdust. It didn't scrape and gum up gears, like the sand did (Cody had asked several times to be sure). Ratchet dropped it onto the tiny leak; the energon soaked into the soil like water before disappearing into the air with a crackle of electricity. Ratchet flipped up the tip of his ring finger and vacuumed up the rest of the soil to be used later, the energon completely gone.

"It's so weird how that works," Cody stated. "It's like dirt was made to soak up you guys's blood."

Ratchet made a face. "Yeah. Strange."

The hangar door opened. Charlie Burns shouted to the medical table, "We're back from the clean up!" Charlie let his three children file past him while he left his sand-covered gloves by the door. "Mayor Lusky isn't complaining about the sand. He says-"

"If I hear ONE MORE THING about that dumb sandcastle festival!" Heatwave roared from the other room. Charlie could just barely make out Boulder and Optimus having a good laugh in the background. "ONE MORE THING."

Meanwhile, Kade found himself at the base of a pile of parts, dropped carelessly beneath the table and sprawling out as wide as Boulder was long. "Woah. Did you take all this out of Blades?"

"Primus, no!" Ratchet growled. "That'd be nearly all of his internals! Those came out of all of the other bots."

Blades chirped, meekly, "And some from me."

"And some from you, yes." Ratchet began to seal Blades's many panels back together, mindless of the grease smears he left on Blades's otherwise pristine shell. "I couldn't salvage most of those parts, so I had to replace them outright. That's what happens when you get sand inside of a complex mechanism."

From the other side of the room, Optimus Prime entered, following by the Rescue Bots. Optimus looked saintly beside his comrades, all of whom were covered in scratched paint and Ratchet's fingerprints. Charlie and Optimus shared a quiet nod of greeting, and with a simply gesture of the hand, Optimus had the hangar's attention. "As much as I have enjoyed this visit, I recognize that stealing our Chief Medic away from his work for several hours, unannounced, is not a good idea."

"There's a massive understatement," griped Ratchet.

"I believe it is time the humans gained knowledge from us. The people of Griffin Rock have proven to be trustworthy allies to our species." Optimus turned to Heatwave. "Heatwave, with your permission, I would like to donate your scrapped parts to the humans for study."

Heatwave replied, "... ew."

"It'd be for science, Heatwave!" Boulder pleaded, joy in his optics. "Just like how humans study fossils!"

"I know it'd be for science," said Heatwave, "But the idea still rubs me the wrong way." Something close to disgust curled in Heatwave's tanks. Some of those parts were his, and something in him absolutely knew those parts were going to Greene, and the thought of Greene digging around in his discarded components- eugh. Now it was actual disgust churning about in Heatwave's tanks.

Chase added, "We have no need for the parts otherwise. They are contaminated and irreparably damaged by the sand, and there are no facilities to melt them down and forge them into fresh protoforms."

Heatwave gritted his teeth. "I'm not sure..."

Charlie held his arms open, friendly, welcoming. "Heatwave, if it helps, we're all organ donors, too."

Dani shrugged. "Well, Cody's not."

"But I will be!" Cody helpfully yelped. "When I'm old enough!"

The fire truck crossed his arms, optics locked on the floor. "I don't like it... but I'm outvoted." Heatwave nodded to the Burns family (sans Cody). "The parts are yours."

Optimus laid a gentle hand on Heatwave's shoulders. "The humans will achieve much, in time. I thank you, Heatwave."

Optimus gathered Ratchet to his side and addressed each Rescue Bot in turn. "Mechs, you are almost entirely new. Your bodies are fresh and young. Take care of them well, and go with Primus."

The two left on the ground bridge back to Jasper, Nevada, and Charlie reminded himself to call Doctor Greene about the parts later that night.

* * *

NOTES JUST TO BE SAFE:

1. This takes place... after Season 1. As of this moment, Season 1 of Rescue Bots is not finished, so I'm just making sure it's after season 1.

2. The "earth absorbs Energon" thing is lifted from Transformers: Prime, although indirectly. If the surface of the Earth cocooned Unicorn for that many millenia, it had to have something in it that cloaked him from people looking for him, mechanical or otherwise.

3. Although Prime and Rescue Bots do, according to the writers, take place in the same continuity, you won't be seeing Optimus and Ratchet again in terms of the main plot.


	2. Midday

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 2: Assembly Required

Disclaimer: If it's in this story, I don't own it.

NOTES TO BE SAFE: I just realized that Doc Greene doesn't have a first name in the show. I'm going to call him Emmet, to fill out the reference to Doctor Emmet Brown from back to the future. I'll try to keep it from coming up too much, so it doesn't get confusing.

* * *

Doctor Emmet Brown had days where he looked back on his life and thought, "I have it great." He had an intelligent daughter. He lived in a small, tight-knit community. He had all the technology he could ask for, both to experiment with and use daily. He had consistent access to the beach! He had a good friend in Charlie Burns, who understood what it was like to have a child to raise, a full time job, and no wife to share the burden. Charlie even knew that pain four-hold, and still, he stayed happy and active and together with his remaining family.

Now, Charlie had given him a great gift; salvaged parts from the Rescue Bots. They were gorgeous, pristine, so advanced in their designs they looked almost alien. Charlie had told him that the fabricators of the parts had given him permission to study them, for science, because they were too "severely damaged" to use with the current Rescue Bot team. For the life of him, he couldn't find a thing wrong with them! Every now and then there was a minute scratch in the otherwise perfect finish, but they were fine!

(Doctor Greene had no idea that Graham had asked that same question. Doctor Greene didn't know that, to the Cybertronians, it was the equivalent of being given a scarred stomach or a heart a size too small.)

He had a real opportunity here, a chance to revolutionize macrorobots like he had done when he was a young man. He had begun to reassemble the pieces.

(Doctor Greene did not know that Graham had wondered about that too. He wasn't told by the four Rescue Bots how their internals were not quite incompatible with each other. He was not given the analogy of animal organ substitution that Graham figured out. He was probably lucky, because he did not hear Charlie overhearing and loudly proclaiming his sudden craving for sausage, nor the Burns family all collectively retching in disgust.)

He ran across a few problems, naturally. Charlie hadn't given him the pieces to build a face and head, so he had to craft that from scratch. He hadn't given him the software needed to run the parts, so he had to borrow a few programs from his other robotic creations. Charlie also hadn't told him how the Rescue Bots transformed into vehicles, but now that he thought about it, it was probably a proprietary technique. He could live without it. He wasn't out to make a giant transforming thing... yet.

The hardest part was figuring out what the thing ran on. The best he could figure with the parts he was given, the Rescue Bots components ran on some strange... liquid energy.

(He had never seen the energon the Rescue Bots drank, like the Burns had. Never knew that it all came through a ground bridge from Nevada, where the Autobots kept their energon production a desperate secret from those who would use it for evil.)

Which is what led him to get out his personal submarine, launch it below the island, and scour the sea bed for his emergency power supply. It was off the grid, fed by a geothermal vent. He kept it safely away from the city's power source, mostly because he knew that whatever he hooked up to it, it was going to be big and energy draining.

He found its location easily, but found something else there. The geothermal vent was leaking a strange liquid which had reached and corroded his generator. It churned as if it wanted to spray upwards, but it was too heavy to escape its own surface tension. It was simply a big, purple, glowing wound in the rocky floor of the sea. He sent out the submarine's robotic arms to collect a sample.

The computer's analysis came back bugged, the readout confused by a sample it had never processed before. Doctor Emmet Greene gasped as his mind filled in the blanks.

He had found liquid energy.

He just knew Charlie would be so proud of him for discovering it! He couldn't wait to show off his new creation.

(He didn't know Charlie had not thought to tell him about energon and the Rescue Bots being sentient. He figured he could trust his friend not to do something entirely stupid... on purpose.)


	3. Evening

The Thing in the Valley

Disclaimer: If it's in this fic, I don't own it.

* * *

Chapter 3: The Valley

The next day was damp and cold. Cody said it was going to rain tomorrow, so they had to get in the best part of the Boxing Festival before they got stuck inside all day. The Rescue Bots had their share of complaints about the whole thing, and rightfully so after a bunch of punching bags exploding led to most of their insides being replaced. Cody told them not to worry and instructed them to drive to The Bluff Where You Can't See Town. He'd tell them about the best part of The Boxing Festival.

He did.

Blades wished he hadn't asked.

"OW!" The copter turned his face away, shielding his delicate ears with his arms. "Stop it, Heatwave!"

"Aw, come on" Heatwave kept his dukes up and bounced lightly on his toes. "This is the best part!"

"Only if you like getting hit in the back-" Heatwave's fist glanced against Blades's belly, and he yelped.

Heatwave smiled wide. He loved fighting. He loved moving around. He loved being the big, strong, tough leader Rescue Bot. He liked his team, and any chance he got to scuffle with them was... was just a perfect day. He play-punched at Blades again, and when his knuckles met a rotor, he bit back a laugh. Poor little Blades hated fighting, but he still tried, and Heatwave knew it. It warmed his spark to know it, although he'd never say it out loud. "If you don't like getting hit in the back, then face me and fight!"

"Nooo!" Blades just barely uncurled. "Why don't you go punch Boulder instead? He doesn't feel it as much!"

"I do too!" Boulder corrected. He didn't get out of his "seat", a nice wide rock. He'd sat aside to watch, thank you, and he was comfortable there. Boxing was so needlessly violent, even if Heatwave liked to do it for fun. "Besides, I can't. I'm holding Cody right now." He held up his hands, displaying their small human friend.

Blades squawked as Heatwave punched at him again, and he nearly started to transform just to keep his head safely tucked away. "Cut it out! I give!"

"Point goes to Heatwave!" Cody cheered. Chase marked another little tally on the bluff wall. "Man, you've got a big lead."

Chase noted, "Any lead over zero points would be considered a 'big lead'."

Heatwave punched the air in victory and laughed. Blades just sighed.

Boulder suddenly dug his feet into the ground. "Somebody's coming up the mountain! I feel them on the seismometer!"

"What? How could-" Boulder's seismometer wasn't that sensitive. Either there were a lot of people coming, or something big was coming up to meet them. Cody waved his arms ridiculously and whisper-yelled. "Robot mode! ROBOT MODE!"

With an apologetic sound, Boulder dropped Cody to the ground and snapped upright, adopting the "humans are around" posture necessary to keep their cover. The other Rescue Bots followed, Heatwave stilling last out of spite. Cody hurriedly patted the dirt off of his clothes.

From the tiny side road, around the corner of The Bluff Where You Can't See Town, appeared Doc Greene. Cody sighed in relief and nearly said hello.

Something followed him.

It was taller than Heatwave. Barely covered here and there with plate metal to suggest a female form, it walked with loose and jerky steps on too-human feet, its upper body staying rigid, its head never moving. It was thin, unhealthy thin, the waist only as big around as Cody was. Multi-colored knotted cables lay exposed to the open air. Gangly arms ended in three needle fingers. Two wide flood lights were its eyes, and they were too small for its massive, incomplete face.

It looked like it hurt to be it, and that thing smiled as it towered over Doctor Greene.

Cody yelped and jumped back, falling against Chase's foot.

"Oh my goodness!" Doctor Greene ran to help Cody to his feet. "I'm very sorry to scare you! I didn't think there would be anybody here."

"Yeah... me neither." Cody shook himself, collecting his pride. He checked the thing over Doc's shoulder; it was still smiling a toothy smile.

He knew stuff like this. Cody had been places. When he was a little little kid, it was Chester Cheddar's Pizza Place. When it was Dani's birthday, it was the amusement park's Bald Mountain Ro-buddy Jamboree. Whenever he visited his grandparents, it was the Civil War Wax Museum. He knew these robots. The minute he looked away, it would move. It would come at him and make a loud noise and he would get scared and scream in front of Doc Greene. He wouldn't let it happen. He just wouldn't.

He asked, and he winced at the small whimper in his voice. "What's that?"

"I haven't named it yet, as it's still in the very early stages," Greene stated. He held his chin in his hand, contemplating. "But currently, it is my experiment in self-balancing bipedal humanoid robotics."

Cody knew Greene well enough to know that meant "robots that walk on two feet", but something felt... off about the explanation. Cody kept his eye on the robot. "Why does it have teeth?"

"For investors!" Greene started pointing to parts on the robot. "I'll have to fill in the missing cheeks, lips, and eyebrows, round out the waist and the hips, and maybe add an extra finger, but by the time I'm done, she will be a beautiful robotic lady!" Doc Greene chuckled warmly. "And investors do like to buy products from a pretty lady!"

"Um..." Cody hadn't noticed the missing eyebrows. The rest of its missing face must have distracted him. It still stared at him, shifting at the hip to maintain its balance but otherwise staying perfectly still. Those wide eyes stared vacantly past him.

Greene laughed again. "Then again, you probably aren't quite old enough to think like that, are you? I bet you'd like it better if it came with a rocket booster and laser cannons."

I'd like it better if it left, Cody thought to himself. It just kept staring through him, never blinking, face completely still. Part of him thought about the Rescue Bots, and how they never blinked either. Their faces were always showing an emotion, though, even when they were trying their best not to. That thing just kept staring with perfectly round, white eyes. Cody felt his stomach turn slightly, and he backed up against Chase-

Chase was vibrating. Cody looked up, trying to find out why, when the wind whipped past him and a shadow came over his face. Cody's eyes snapped back to see that thing, that robot, suddenly right above him, blocking the sun, glaring right down on him with those wide blank eyes.

He jumped back again, and hit the ground, and screamed.

From behind him, he heard Doctor Greene urgently ordering the robot back three steps. Cody was enveloped in dark hands- Heatwave's hands- and lifted into the air.

"COD- Cody is in distress!" Heatwave announced with no small amount of terror in his voice. "We must return him to base immediately, uh, citizen!"

"Yeah! To, uh, prevent accidents!" Blades lost his robot voice, a quiver of real fear leeching into his vocalizer. Cody wrapped his arms around Heatwave's thumb and grabbed his wrist, expecting to be thrown into the fire truck's cab at any moment. "Good day, Doctor Greene!"

The Rescue Bots didn't transform, they just ran from The Bluff Where You Can't See Town at full speed. Doc Greene sighed, thinking to himself how this was exactly why he didn't test his robot in the middle of town. He didn't even wonder why his robot had decided to step forward without his permission. He chalked it up to a loss of balance, like the earlier tests. Resigning himself a long day, Greene began instructing the robot to walk down to the shore.

Back at home base, Chase shut the door behind his team mates and locked it with a shaking hand. "W-we are home."

"Welcome back," snarked Charlie. He kept his smirk until Heatwave dropped a shivering Cody into his arms; he immediately hugged his son and stroked his hair, shushing him.

"What happened to you guys?" asked Dani. She surveyed each Rescue Bot: Blades was hugging himself; Boulder was fidgeting from foot to foot; Chase kept checking the door out of the corner of his optic; Heatwave paced the long wall of the room like a caged tiger. "... see a ghost?"

"Greene has mad- He put- gragh!" Heatwave stopped pacing for only a moment, and his shoulders shook from withheld energy. "He took our parts and put them together into some Primus-forsaken ghoul!"

"Its optics..." Blades gestured towards his face. "Its optics were all wrong! They were white and dead and bright and-" His voice devolved into a horrified shriek, and he buried his face into Boulder's back. "-and it wouldn't stop staring at us!"

"We apologize for our irrational fear," said Chase. His optics flicked back to the door, the windows. "But seeing a living creature-"

"It wasn't alive!" Heatwave snapped. "It was just playing at it!"

"-made out of our discarded components was a bit disconcerting."

The Burns family stayed quiet for a moment.

"No, that's perfectly understandable." Charlie gave Cody one more hug and ushered him towards Kade. "Kade, go upstairs and put on a nice movie for Cody. That one with the gray fuzzy thing and the little girls, he likes that one." Nothing scary in that one, nothing robotic. Kade nodded in agreement and walked a distressingly silent Cody out of the room. "Bots, I'm sorry about what Greene's done."

Boulder shook his head. "I-it wasn't... that bad. Maybe it'll get better when he's finished."

"Still, he's overstepped his bounds." Charlie grabbed his keys off a hook on the wall. "Come on, Chase. We'll go-"

Thunder rattled the dark windows of the base, rain following quickly after. The Rescue Bots immediately clumped together in the middle of the room, far away from the walls. The Burns family had been warned about this. The Rescue Bots had a pre-programmed fear of rain, a leftover from the heavily polluted atmosphere of Cybertron. While they knew by heart (by Spark, whatever the equivalent was for them) that the rain on Earth was much less acidic, they still feared circuit damage and shied away from thunderstorms.

Graham laid a hand on his father's shoulder. "Dani and I will watch some movies with them, calm them down. We can go in the morning."

In Doctor Greene's lab, the theme was the same. Greene was tired, slightly wet from catching the beginning of the thunderstorm, and frustrated. With a touchpad under one hand and his daughter folded under his free arm, he made his complaints known. "I've gotten the same response from every person I've come across. Its waist is too small, eyes too wide, unnecessary teeth. It walks, but it doesn't walk properly, and its center of balance keeps shifting."

Frankie understood, but wasn't worried. She was no stranger to her father's half-finished and odd-looking robotic contraptions. They just fell into the Uncanny Valley, and she'd gotten over her knee-jerk reaction to humanoid robots when she was a little girl. She knew others hadn't, but she also knew her father was capable of amazing things. He just needed a little encouragement.

"You've done a lot of work today, Dad." Frankie leaned harder onto her father, close enough to where she could hear his heartbeat. "Maybe your brain is all addled and stuff."

"I probably am just tired." Doctor Greene sent the last command to the new bot, refilling its dwindling fuel cells with the purple energy he found at the bottom of the ocean. From its resting place in the balance cradle (a frame of metal rods and cable supports to keep robots from accidentally falling), the new robot plugged into the mainframe with a series of thick wires sprouting from its head like hair. Its lines glowed purple as it recharged. "We'll all go to sleep and try again tomorrow."

"The investors are gonna love her," said Frankie. "Once she's pretty, anyway." Frankie paused. "... that was a bad thing to say, wasn't it?"

The implication finally hit Doctor Greene. "Well... kind of. It would be if it were a person."

"Because all people are pretty, even though they're not perfect," Frankie recited.

The two geniuses hugged. Doc patted Frankie's head, mindful of her ponytails. "Just like Mama always said."

The robot rocked on the cradle, finding its balance. Its eyes switched on, flooding the room with light.

Doc Greene pulled away from the hug. "That's... odd." He tapped his touchpad, trying to find the command that switched on the robot. "I thought I'd turned that off."

The systems within the robot began to whir, humming, echoing loud in the metal lab. Its fingers clenched, one by one, alternating each hand as if it was testing its grip. It jaw opened and shut slowly.

"Does it do like my mp3 player?" Frankie asked. The robot's head snapped upright, and its cables slackened as it rose to its feet. Frankie shivered; she'd gotten used to a lot, but her dad's inventions turning on by themselves was never a good sign. She hopped off of her dad's lap, moving slowly to stand behind his chair, away from the robot. "Where it turns back on when you recharge it?"

The cables were completely slack now. It pulled forward, the wires falling out of their sockets and leaving it with gaping holes reaching deep into its skull. Somehow, its eyes focused on Greene and Frankie.

"Well, it did that the first time I put the liquid energy into it..." Doc Greene couldn't find the command, and even as he tried to turn the machine back off, it clicked online, limb by limb. "I thought I'd..."

It screamed, and it lunged for them.

* * *

NOTES TO BE SAFE:

Note 1: I have mentioned Frankie's mother. I'm not sure if she exists, so I'm keeping references to her to a minimum.

Note 2: Charlie Burns is talking about My Neighbor Totoro.

Note 3: I've never actually written a scary story before, so please, be critical. I have to know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong so I can improve.

Note 4: The Uncanny Valley is the phenomenon where humans become less comfortable around an inanimate object as it become more and more humanoid. For examples, see the TV Tropes article on The Uncanny Valley. They have a helpful selection of links.


	4. Night A

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 4: The Thing

Disclaimer: If it's in this fic, I don't own it.

* * *

"Shut up, Kade."

Kade's smug grin only grew. "I didn't say anything."

"Shut up, still!" Cody pointed accusingly at his brother's face. "That! Stop doing that! Shut up!"

Kade crossed his arms defiantly. "But I'm not saying anything," he cooed in the smuggest "big brother" voice that he could. Ah, it was nice to be reminded that he was the oldest, the bravest, and the biggest brother in the family. Cody, afraid of robots. Heh!

"You're saying it with your face!" Cody threw himself onto the living room sofa and covered up with the thickest blanket he could pull out of the hall closet. His little voice muffled by the blanket, Cody snapped back, "You'd be scared too, if you saw it!"

"Sure I would," Kade chuckled. "Who wouldn't be scared of the terrible, horrible, half-finished robot lady?"

Charlie's voice blasted over Kade's communicator. "Attention all units! We've got a situation. The robot has gotten loose in the tunnels under Greene Laboratories. Doc and Frankie are in immediate danger."

Heatwave and the other Burns siblings were receiving the message at the same time. Charlie continued. "Repeat, Doc and Frankie are in immediate danger, and their exact location is unknown. I need everyone to enter the tunnels, fan out, and search for them."

Blades's rotors buzzed in terror. "We have to go down there? In the tunnels, in the dark, at night? With that thing?"

"I knew it was pure evil," growled Heatwave.

"Given the information we have received, there is no indication that the creature is evil," Chase summarized. "We only know that Frankie and Doctor Greene are in danger."

"It can't be any worse than the last time one of Doctor Greene's inventions went bad," Dani soothed. When the Rescue Bots all shot her a unified incredulous look, she shrugged. "At least this time it's not a dinosaur?"

The Rescue Bots pondered.

Boulder giggled. It was a nervous giggle, but he giggled nonetheless. Heatwave grimaced, but a heavy line of tension left his shoulders. Chase patted Blades on the back reassuringly.

Graham sighed in relief and stood up. "All right, that'll be our motto. 'No matter how bad it is, it's not a dinosaur this time.' Sound good?"

They didn't have time to agree. Kade and Charlie exited the elevator and sprinted to Heatwave, who transformed just in time to open his door and let Kade inside. Boulder and Chase transformed for their respective drivers.

"Blades, I think you'll be carrying me," Dani stated.

"All right, team," thundered Charlie. "Let's roll out!"

Heatwave groused. "Well." He tapped a light fixture. "At least it's bright down here."

Something mechanical broke (by the screeching, crunching sound in the distance), and all the lights blinked out. From the girly, terrified shrieking sound in the distance, it seemed Blades had noticed.

Kade whined, "Why did you say it? Isn't watching movies ALL that you guys do? Why did you feel the need to say it?"

"Well, I'm sorry!" Heatwave nearly screamed without being sorry at all. "But isn't a certain human always reminding me that real life doesn't work like the movies?"

"Yikes! Okay, chill." Kade pulled a flashlight out of his coat pocket and activated his intercom. "Graham?"

"Yeah, light's out on my side, too." Graham sat cross-legged in Boulder's front seat, tapping his coordinates into his tablet computer. His location, according to the outdated maps, didn't exist, but at least he could hone in on the other Rescue Bots. Each bot formed the corner of a square that radiated outward from the bunker. He was currently the top-leftmost dot, somewhere under City Hall. He guessed from their headings that Chase and Charlie were the top right dot, and either bottom dot could be Dani and Blades or Heatwave and Kade. "We've got on our headlights, so we're good. Any sign of Doc and Frankie?"

"Nothing yet," said Charlie. He kept one hand firmly on Chase's steering wheel, even though he wasn't driving. "I'm getting a lot of calls from the town. Power's out up top, too."

Heatwave switched on his headlights just as Kade flipped on his flashlight. The light didn't travel far; if anything, it just made the tunnel look even darker, each branching passage framed in inky black.

"I'm gonna muck around in the wires," Kade announced. "Maybe there's a breaker box or so-"

Something screamed, something inhuman and broken, something sharp and steely, its cry warbling and keening as if it needed everything alive to know it was in agony. Two more cries, young and old, Frankie and Doc, echoed back.

Kade shouted "Holy Christmas!", both at the noise and at the sensation of Heatwave lifting him by the armpits and clutching him to his chest like a tiny teddy bear. "Put me down, Heatwave!"

Somewhere under the zoo, Blades hunkered against a wall, rotors pressed protectively against the cool surface, nearly blind. His robot mode didn't have headlights that faced forward, and his night vision was just on the side of useless with Dani and her flashlight burning into his optics. He let her take charge, grateful to fall back and just sort of stay paralyzed with fear for a bit. Until he was needed, yeah. Until he was needed, he'd stay with his back pressed up against the wall where nothing could sneak up on him.

Dani, meanwhile, whipped her headlight into what she deemed the darkest corridor (subconsciously holding her flashlight like she would her handgun) and waited. "Anybody know where that noise came from?"

Graham's voice was a welcome sound from her radio. "I can't quite triangulate it, not with how it echoes in the tunnels."

"There's not anything you can do?" Dani asked, shoulders tight and aching. Blades shivered against the wall. "Can't you, like, track their heat signatures? Make it so we can't hear anybody's heartbeat except theirs?"

"Dad! Down there!"

The sound came from a hallway just to Blades's right. Dani, hoping for the best, aimed her flashlight at the floor instead of upwards, and sure enough, there were Doc and Frankie Greene's feet running towards them. They dove for Dani; Blades stepped up behind them, protecting their backs with his body, while Dani caught the both of them in a tight hug.

"There you are! We've been looking for you." Dani let Frankie and Doc catch their breath as she did some mental math. "Guys, you're a least a mile away from the laboratory. What happened?"

"Slight... equipment... malfunction!" Greene gasped, sweaty and shaking. Frankie clung to his lab coat, watching behind them with one eye, unwilling to let go of her dad. "A bit... dangerous! Nothing serious! Just-" He swallowed. "Just dangerous."

Frankie said, "It tried to eat me."

Dani mentally backpedaled a bit, missing Doc's explanation that tried to explain why his latest invention was trying to eat anybody. She shot Blades a look and was met with a helpless shrug. Luckily, the Greene missed the tiny display of emotion, still shivering and babbling in Blades's shadow.

Dani wondered when Blades grew a shadow.

A claw wrapped around his neck, sharp talons against his glass. Whatever was behind him squeezed with an unearthly strength, yet weighed nothing. It quickly wrapped around his neck and filled his vision with dead, white optics.

Blades screamed, and the thing opened its mouth and bit him in a cruel mockery of a kiss. Something Blades couldn't see slithered into his mouth and down his throat, farther, faster than he could process, scraping his insides with its metal tongue. Willing back the urge to vomit, Blades grabbed it by the head and shoved it back, reeling in disgust as its tongue stretched out and out and out, filling his insides even as he held the thing at arm's length away from him. Blades could feel it scraping at his tank aperture; desperately, he grabbed at its tongue and yanked in opposite directions, trying to break it off from the source.

Doc and Frankie ducked behind Dani as she scrambled for her intercom. "No! Dani, make sure my equipment is not damaged!"

"Bigger problems, Doctor Greene!" The intercom hissed, and Dani shouted, "All units, we have visual confirmation on the big bot. It is hostile and extremely dangerous. Blades is under attack!"

Graham answered back. "Boulder and I are closet to you, we should be there in three minutes. Hold it off!"

"How?" Dani gasped as the thing telescoped out at the spine, curling around Blades's shoulder and wrenching it backwards. In a panic, Blades threw all of his weight into one sharp tug.

The tongue snapped off the thing with a stiff pop. It screeched in pain and leaped away, pulling its components in and shrinking to half of Blades's size. Blades pulled and pulled the tongue out of his systems, still wriggling, and threw it spitefully down to the ground.

"Evil- evil thing!" Blades gasped. The tongue bled and writhed uselessly against the ground before it puttered out in a puddle of purple goo. "Evil evil evil thing!"

"Oh, my poor invention!" Doc watched his haywire invention carefully furl around itself, gasping in pain. "That will take weeks to recalibrate-"

It moved in quick flashes, as if teleporting into position rather than moving itself. It punched the far wall, arm stretched into a thin ribbon of metal and tubing, and pulled out a bundle of circuits and wires. Its hand unfolded, absorbed the miscellaneous bits through its palm and fed them up into its throat through its arm. With a satisfied moan, it stretched its reformed tongue out and out, flexing its grabby claws at the tip. Rebuilt, it stood to its full height, scraping the ceiling of the tunnels, and turned its eyes to Blades.

"It self-repairs?" Dani growled.

Doc shrugged a tiny, self-conscious shrug. "The Nanobots needed some fine-tuning." Frankie groaned in shame.

Dani sighed. "All right, Blades, we'll need to be a little rough this time."

"Rough this time. Okay." Blades widened his stance, keeping the thing square in his optics. "How rough?"

"CUT ITS HEAD OFF!" Frankie shouted.

Dani was grinning too hard to hear Doc admonish Frankie. That's what she told herself, at least. "You heard the lady, Blades!"

The thing turned and dove after the humans.

Before anyone could scream, Blades was above them, rotors spinning into the thing's face. They struck against the thing's face with a reedy twang, catching its pieces and throwing them to the ground in tiny chunks. It jumped back in shock; Blades followed it, pushing the humans back into the wall in a gust of wind.


	5. Night B

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 5: The Chase

Disclaimer: If it's in this fic, I don't own it.

* * *

Boulder spun his treads until they burned streaks into the floor, threw his weight around corners like he was Chase's size, slammed sideways into walls, desperate to reach Blades and the humans. Graham navigated from inside, one hand gripping Boulder's steering level while he navigated by tablet. "Just two more tunnels, then the next right."

"That puts our ETA at 24 seconds," Boulder calculated, transmitting directly to Blades. "Can you hang on for that long?"

Down in the tunnels, Blades spun into the thing, slicing along its arm plating with his back rotors. His weight fell onto the front of his feet, keeping him bobbing and spinning while his blades whistled past, against, through the attacking Thing. The Thing kept its feet planted and wound its body against the floor like a snake in its death throes. Blades stepped over every attempt to trip him. Rotor tips scraped against the wall and ceiling and filled the tunnels with shrapnel.

Boulder's transmission came through Dani's comm link. "Can you hang on for that long?"

"Half a minute? I think so." Dani pressed Doctor Greene and Frankie against the wall, shielding them with her body. She kept her eyes firmly on the Thing, flashlight shining into its left eye in a distant attempt to help Blades. "Blades has got it pinned down."

The Thing stretched out its neck and bit, teeth sinking into Blades's left ankle. The helicopter pivoted on that foot, clipping its outstretched neck and wrenching the teeth free from his leg. It snapped back against the ground, nearly flattening the cornered humans.

"On second thought, Blades has got US pinned down, too." The Thing focused one bright eye on her, blinding her. "Hurry, please!"

"Almost there!" Boulder called back. "I'll take Frankie and Doc back to base while you guys hold off the monster."

Somewhere behind her, Frankie asked, "How is Boulder-"

"Questions later!" Dani snapped. "Life in danger now. Blades! Holding up?"

"Barely!" Blades twitched as his concentration broke. The Thing wound around his ankle in his moment of weakness; with a buzz of his tail rotor, he scared it off. "Where are the others?"

"Over here!"

Boulder whirled around the corner, over-steered and bumped the wall. Blades yelped and jumped backwards; his rotors clipped back down. The Thing didn't have time to look up before Boulder drove on top of it and parked spitefully on its head. Blades yelped as it twitched, clawing at Boulder's treads ineffectually.

Graham threw open the door. "Scientists and children first!"

"We'll bring back whatever's left of it." Dani patted the positively green Doc Greene on the back. "See you topside."

The Greenes clambered into Boulder's cab, twitching at every little move the Thing made. It still wriggled from underneath Boulder, its cries muffled by his bulk, blindly groping for anything to catch onto. Doc slammed the door behind him with more than a little panic, punching the locking button as hard as he would allow himself.

The Thing grunted low and lurched, and Boulder began to rock.

Graham gulped. "Boulder, stop doing that."

Although his face registered his fear, Boulder spoke in his "robot" voice. "I'm not, sir."

"Don't let that thing go near you!" Blades chided Boulder in his real voice. Little bubbles of energon rose up from where he had been bitten, scratched, and tore by the machine. "I'm telling you, once you get moving again, don't stop! That thing is evil!"

Dani gulped, trying hard to get Doc and Frankie into Boulder without them asking questions. "Um, you got that, Graham?"

"Y-yeah, I got it." Graham latched onto the controls while the Greens pressed back into their seats, belted and buckled. He hurriedly pressed a few stray buttons on his Tablet while he could, switching on the beginnings of an escape plan. "All right, count of three, we roll out, and Blades keeps the machine busy. One-"

It roared, twisting its body. Boulder's right tread left the ground.

Blades jumped. "TwothreeRUNBOULDER!"

Boulder bolted. The thing's claws dug into the grooves of his treads, unable to catch him up, twisting its arm cables into tight coils before it let go. As Blades dove for it, it folded into itself, forcing its body thin as its arms and slithering out between Blades's fingertips. It bounded through the tunnels after Boulder with a long, boneless gait, disappearing into the dark before Blades could pick up speed. Long limbs moving unlike any Earthly creature, almost floating, it caught up to the bulldozer in three strides.

Boulder turned a sharp corner, just avoiding the wall. The Thing slammed into the wall and sprung back, easily as if it were made of jelly. It reached after Boulder with infinitely telescoping arms, just barely missing his exhaust pipes.

"How is it doing that?" Graham bleated.

"It's just like the movies!" Frankie squealed, half in panic. "No matter what we do, the monster's gonna catch up to us once we trip and fall!"

The comm link crackled, and Chase spoke, "Heatwave and I are currently on an intercept course with the beast. ETA is 24.9 seconds, 47.8 seconds for Heatwave and Kade."

A blast door shut behind Boulder, blocking the monster's path. Before the humans could register it losing their trail, it was behind them again, slinking through a human-sized side door in a side tunnel to follow its prey.

Behind the escaping bulldozer, the tunnels fell back into pitch darkness, lit only by Dani's flashlight and Blades's wounds. They followed Boulder's trail until they heard the blast door slam, Blades running into it headlong as Dani stared in amazement.

Dani shouted, "What was that?"

"That was me."

Up in the fire station, Cody was met with a collective shout from all his siblings, all the Rescue Bots, and his father. He pulled the headset away from his ear with one hand, holding his blanket tight to his body with the other.

"Cody, what are you doing on the line?"

"The power's out and the back-up generator's in the control room." He didn't have the nerve to say he got spooked. Cody replaced the headphones and went back to the screen, typing in the commands to shut the tunnel's blast doors whenever the monster got near one. The little red blip that was the Thing never stopped moving, but sometimes it would pause in frustration, giving him a little time to plan ahead. "I wasn't gonna do anything until I saw Graham turning on the controls for the safety doors. I figured I'd try to keep it from following you."

"That's my boy," Charlie beamed. "Good job, Cody."

"I've got a direct link to that schematic, Cody," Boulder interrupted. "Just shut whatever door you can, and I'll avoid it. Try to box it in."

"I've been trying to box it in!" Cody was familiar with this kind of thing. It was a minigame on a few of Kade's video games, but... "It keeps going through the walls!"

"The schematics only show the blast doors, not the normal ones," Dani announced. "It's been wiggling through them."

"It can't do that!" Heatwave growled. "Its head itself is bigger than a human door!"

"That hasn't been stopping it." Down in the tunnels, Blades picked up a piece of the monster's shell from a doorway. Dani focused her flashlight on it; triangular, one side of it was clearly a slice from Blades, while another was a rough tear from where the monster had oozed its way through. "That thing can squish itself more than we give it credit for."

Back in Boulder, Doctor Greene was tapping Graham's shoulder. "Um, excuse me, but how are the-"

"Bigger problems!" Graham snapped. He and Boulder drove determinedly towards a weak shaft of light and rain water. If memory served him, it was the tunnel exit near the ferry to the mainland. "Okay, I can see an exit from here. I'll get-"

The Thing came through a wall, in front of them, eyes bright, arms outstretched, teeth bared, screaming, silhouetted against the curtain of rain. Boulder and the Greenes shrieked; the Rescue Bot threw himself to the right just as a blast door came down in front of the thing. Boulder drove hard, wincing each time a blast door closed, cutting off the sight of those bright piercing optics.

"New plan!" Chief Burns called over the comm link. "Boulder, Chase, intercept. We're going to separate Doc and Frankie."

The Boulder turned another right. The doors shut around them like ringing bells, and the thing roared in frustration. The Greenes yelped and dove into each others arms. Doc held Frankie tight to his shoulder.

"Cody, call the mayor and tell him to evacuate the island, Code Yellow, Rogue Machinery."

Cody saluted the comm link habitually. "Yes, sir!"

"Heatwave, Kade, back to the fire station."

Heatwave snarled before Kade could. "What? Why? I need to stay down here and help my team!"

"Yeah! We're way more useful down here than above ground doing evacuation work!" added Kade.

"Kade needs to go up top and gather all the volunteers he can so we can apprehend this thing." Chief Burns's voice grew quiet. "Heatwave, you need to take Cody and Frankie to the mainland, where they'll be safe."

Chief Burns cut the comm link to the others, speaking directly to Kade and Heatwave while Chase drove to meet Boulder. "I know you're afraid of That Thing."

Heatwave's "console face" flinched. Kade could see the shame in that look and squeezed Heatwave's steering wheel in support.

"But I also know that you're good at putting on your brave face when it gets down to it. Frankie and Cody need someone right now who understands exactly why they're scared, but won't let himself be distracted by it. Can I trust you with that?"

Heatwave stayed quiet, thinking. Stay with Cody and Frankie. Leave the island. Abandon his team. Not face the thing made of body parts. Possibly see them again. Possibly be the only Rescue Bot left alive Save the kids. Save the kids, said his CPU above all else. However scared he was, Frankie and Cody were small and defenseless and... meat. Whatever terror he felt, they must have felt it tenfold. "... Yes sir."

When Chase spoke, he spoke quietly and reverently, breaking Charlie Burns out of his moment of worry. "Sir, we will rendezvous with Boulder and the others in 3.2 seconds."

The thing roared in the dark. Boulder and Chase stopped side by side, nose to tail end, engines running. Doors popped open, and the switch to Chief Burn's car was made as quickly as possible. Frankie and Doc shared one small wave before the Rescue Bots took off in separate directions, Chase heading for the fire station and Boulder heading towards the center of town.


	6. Midnight

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 6: Nightmare Face

Disclaimer: Still don't own nothin'.

* * *

Heatwave and Chase met in the tunnels below the fire house. The walls hummed with the pouring rain, slightly damp to the touch, slipping to the floor in tiny beads. The air smelled fresh, alive, and Frankie never felt so happy to smell rain in her entire life.

Even the smell of rain, of escape from the tunnels, couldn't get her to let go of Chief Burns's hand when they exited Chase. Kade hopped out of Heatwave just in time for the two bots to transform into bipedal mode.

"I called Cody on the drive over," the chief explained, passing Frankie along to Kade. Frankie clutched Kade's entire arm, noticing Heatwave walk past them to stand by Chase. "He should be dressed and packed to go. I asked him to bring enough for him and Frankie."

"Where will they go once they're ashore?" Kade asked.

Charlie said, "I'll have Heatwave contact Optimus Prime to send Autobot reinforcements and send the kids along with him. There's a bunker under New York where they can stay until this has blown over."

"Mr. Burns?" Frankie asked. "Who's Opt-"

"Bigger problems, Frankie," Kade shushed her with a clipped command.

Just across the room, Heatwave couldn't find the words to say. His mouth gaped open uselessly, hands hovering in the air as if he could grab the information out of his chest and manually shove it into Chase's processor. What was he supposed to tell Chase? 'I'm abandoning all of you to the mercy of the un-living beast'? 'Good luck against the monstrosity'? 'Chief Burns is sending me away because I'm a coward'?

"Heatwave," said Chase plainly, "I acknowledge that you are both frightened and embarrassed by your fright. I am similarly shaken."

At least Heatwave had the opportunity to snark. He smirked, and Chase returned it with a tiny smile. "I can tell. You're just shaking like a leaf."

"I do admit I find the creature disgusting, but not truly horrifying." Chase placed a hand against Heatwave's arm, and Heatwave did feel the slight tremor in his friend's fingers. "I also admit that my interactions with civilians, children in particular, are lacking. My lack of skill in this regard makes me ill fitted for this mission."

He was going somewhere with his, he knew it. Heatwave nodded. "Your point?"

"Your fear makes you ill suited for the mission of capturing of the illegal machination at this time." Chase continued before Heatwave could flinch. "You are, however, perfectly suited for this interaction with civilian children. You must acknowledge this."

"So many long words just to tell me to cheer up." Heatwave pulled Chase into a tight hug, which Chase returned with his usual distant, but present affection. "I'll be back for all of you once the kids are safe."

"And we will be there for you, whether we are physically with you or not." Chase pulled away. "See you soon."

As small as it was, it made Heatwave feel much better to know Chase expected to see him again. He pulled back and transformed, letting Kade and Frankie into his cab and taking off towards the exit ramp. Chase and Chief Burns drove into the tunnels, the blast doors sealing off alongside them, leaving only one way out.

Deep in the tunnels, Boulder was still being tailed, now without Cody to keep the trail behind them broken and twisting. The thing matched their pace easily with its distended arms and legs, weaving through the corridors, just barely illuminated by its own optics and Boulder's tail lights.

Inside the cab, Doc Greene and Graham brainstormed for ways to switch off the monster. "Maybe if we bring it towards Griffin Crest once the island's evacuated?" Graham suggested.

"It is always our last resort," Greene stated. "But the island won't be completely evacuated for some time. Perhaps if I make use of Boulder's CB loudspeaker-"

Boulder nearly pulled a face when Doc grabbed for his loudspeaker controls, already on edge from keeping his engine running at top gear for so long. He was built for power and weight, not speed; his treads felt ready to snap from the strain. Doctor Greene cleared his throat and spoke.

"Experiment, shut down."

Its head shot forward from its neck, teeth filling the back window, scraping against the glass at it bellowed in anger. Graham and Greene jumped out of their seats, away from the teeth. While its head pulled away, the humans could not force themselves to sit down, leaning their weight against the dashboard.

Ahead, one of the tunnels was just lighter than the others, shining the gentlest blue, coming up on the right. "I see light!"

"Go towards it!" Graham ordered, pushing Boulder's steering lever. Doc Greene yelped and shoved the lever the other way, and Boulder locked up, treads catching on the ground for a terrifying half second that got the monster that much closer to them.

"Go away from it! We can't get let it outside!"

The blue grew more intense. Boulder pointed out, "Outside shouldn't be getting closer to us-"

The blue fell out of the corridor and became Blades, bleeding energon from his previous bout with the monster. As Boulder roared forward, unable to stop in time, Blades ran forward with his rotors spinning, sharp and vengeful, into the face of the beast.

Topside, the fire station was surrounded. Humans Heatwave had been before but never helped came in firefighter's uniforms, police colors, army fatigues, standing ready to take orders. They armed themselves with guns, lots of guns, none of the electroweapons or netting or non-damaging equipment the Rescue Bots were mandated to use. They ignored the heavy rain, how it blew sideways and whipped at their legs, how they were slowly soaking in it. They had come out of hiding to stop that monster, and the only thing keeping them at bay was Kade.

Kade jumped out of the door in mid stop and began shouting instructions to the crowd. They fell into the tunnel entrance in tight lines, all in step, Kade the last one in.

Kade nodded to Heatwave, giving him a hard pat above the headlight. "Trusting you with my baby brother, Heatwave."

Heatwave sent out a tiny pulse of energy that Kade probably couldn't feel. "Nothing will hurt him while I'm here."

They held that silence for a while until Kade's hair clung to his head, and he left, melting into the dark with his human kind.

Frankie, silent inside Kade's cabin, swallowed a dry lump in her throat. "You're alive... aren't you?"

Heatwave sighed and relented. "Yeah."

For as big a secret as that was supposed to be, Frankie did not react. He started straight ahead at Heatwave's steering wheel, hands flat against the seat, eyes vacant. "The other ones, too?"

Heatwave nodded through his console. "All of us."

Frankie distantly shrugged, her eyes far away, her shoulders shaking. "Well, at least you're human-looking and alive... you could be an angry, hungry robot dinosaur, I suppose."

Heatwave figured that was supposed to make him laugh. Cody appeared in the fire station doorway, fully dressed in his softest coat, scouting backpack heavy on his shoulders. Heatwave opened the door for him, not minding the rain that blew in from outside. "Come on, Cody. We have a ferry to catch."

Down in the tunnels, It screamed. Blades had taken off its arm twice, only for it to tear into the wall and reform it out of bits of wire and shrapnel. Even as he fought it now, for every piece of shell Blades sliced off, the thing would bite another chunk off the wall and fuse it to its body. Every small grapple with the beast resulted in a fresh wound against Blades's chassis. Without warning, It wrapped around Blades's back and jammed its arm into the base of his rotor, fingers wriggling and reaching into his deepest gears and motors. Blades shrieked in pain and tore away from its arm, the still-wriggling hand slowly worming its way into his systems.

While Blades feinted back, Boulder transformed and caught the monster by what had been his transformation cog, snapping its spine like a whip and cracking its head into the floor. Its face offlined from the shock, but only for a moment, while its legs splintered into a dozen tiny tentacles and wormed its way into the seams of Boulder's door. It pulled at the hinges in tight, quick jerks, slowly pulling the doors off while Graham and Doctor Greene cowered in the center of the seat, unable to move in the tight confines of Boulder's chest.

"High voltage electricity can be hazardous to human health!" Chase called to the humans inside Boulder. He broke into a full run, moving faster than Boulder even at his lowest speed, Charlie Burns safely out of harm's way in the back tunnels with the volunteers. His taser charged as he instructed, "Please keep your hands and feet away from metallic objects and alert an physician if numbness or a burning sensation occurs!"

The taser landed against the thing's spine. Electricity lit the tunnel in flaming white. The creature thrashed wildly, losing its grip on Boulder only to whip deep gashes into the Rescue Bots in its throes of agony. Chase disengaged the taser and bodily shoved Boulder towards the volunteers. "All unarmed humans together and under cover! This area will come under gunfire at-!"

It whipped itself into a tight coil, launching itself around Chase's neck.

Up in Griffin Rock, it was dead quiet. Houses were unlit, but tidy, the owners leaving without rush. Businesses were calmly locked down, some with covered windows to protect from storm damage. The holographic light posts had calmly turned themselves off in the power outage and were nestled into their docks comfortably, like birds coming in from a storm.

Heatwave almost felt snubbed again. All that work, his team's life in danger, and once again, Griffin Rock didn't care.

The only thing distracting him was watching Cody and Frankie organize their supplies for the long trip they were about to undertake. Currently they were arguing over who got the cherry red versus the pea-soup green toothbrush. Cody's purposefully lighthearted and childish banter broke Frankie out of her unresponsive state, got her to laugh a little now that she was out of danger. It made Heatwave feel a little better, as well. He still had to call Optimus Prime, a daunting task that loomed in his vision like a surgical drill. He'd have to admit his weakness to the leader of the Autobots...

Eventually. Right now, he had to bring the kids to the ferry.

Down below, bullets ricocheted and shattered. Humans took cover behind the wounded Chase, felled by a blow to the main hydraulic piston in his leg, alive but unable to move. The Thing in its struggles led Blades into the humans; when Blades switched his rotors off in realization, it pounced, crimping his body into the wall with the same metal-tearing bites it used to claim new skin, entombing him in the panels shoulder-first, rotors useless. Boulder, unable to release the humans safely, tried to fight back with wide punches and heavy steps and failed, falling to the ground as the thing wove itself around him, attaching a fraction of arm to a splinter of torso, trapping him in a net of shards and sinew and ribbing his cabin open through the glass.

It looked down upon Graham and Doctor Greene, eyes bright, searching.

Doctor Greene's thoughts flitted through his mind.

Never see my beautiful baby girl again.

If it wants me, it can have me, for the good of the Earth.

What was I trying to do, making that horrible thing?

Roaring, it let them go. It grabbed either side of Boulder's mutilated cabin and pressed down, folding the humans into their seats, trapping them. Shots fired again, aiming for its eyes and head; it began reweaving itself into a solid mass and jumped to the ceiling, beginning to squeeze through the panels upward.

Doctor Greene's thought hit him, and his heat stopped in his chest.

It didn't want him. It wanted Frankie.

Terror stole his voice, and Doctor Greene couldn't scream as The Thing escaped up into the town.

There was one ferry dock that lead to the mainland. It was always big enough, always had enough ferries to accommodate the townspeople whenever they had to evacuate, except for the weird days when they panicked and rushed the boats all at once. Most of the town had already calmly, quietly left, safely ashore in Massachusetts. There were only a few stragglers left; the not-quite-old-enough-to-be-hospitalized elderly, the remaining Corps of Engineers in charge of leading the rest of the evacuation, the Mayor, and his Wife, who couldn't decide what to bring ashore, so they brought everything they could fit.

"Now, dear, I know you're upset we couldn't bring the limo." Mayor Luskey winced at his golf clubs dug into his elbow, unable to turn his head for all the luggage in the car. "But we already know it doesn't fit on the ferry." A block of red appeared in Luskey's rear window, indistinct in the rain, and he complained to his not-listening wife. "Ugh, look at that. They can accommodate one of those consarned Rescue Bots, but they can't fit the limo!"

Heatwave didn't notice the Mayor and his Wife in their fancy little car. They were just a small smudge in his front vision, sensors addled by the heavy rain, his attention given almost entirely to the kids in his front seat and their manically energetic singing of campfire songs. It bordered on being a little creepy, but they needed all the smiles they could get, and he wasn't willing to take it from them.

The ferry was in sight, maybe half a minute away, less.

Mayor Luskey was on the loading dock, yelling at the captain to hurry it up, ahead of them.

The road cracked outward.

Heatwave slammed on the brakes hard, jostling the kids, at the crack bubbled and grew, breaking in a spider web, up and up. A curl of smoke, not smoke, too solid for smoke rose and fell from the wound in the road. The slithering smoke splintered into a wide root, a parody of a hand, and rose and rose. Chunks of metal caught, forced themselves up through the rubble, followed by a long string of teeth and an eye, bright white round dead eye, the head following behind it in an uphill flow. The rain highlighted its mangled for in a fine mist, masked it in the heavy downpour. It scraped against the asphalt, an unholy sound of jagged nails on chalk and crunching metal.

In maybe half a second, less, It grew out of the ground as a sickly weed. Parts no longer connected. It held itself in a form by bits of wire and tendons, sickly dark energon flowing through threadbare tubes. It held Its mockery of a face together only slightly better, keeping both dead eyes level with the Rescue Bot, hands planted into the ground. It wrenched itself, but could not slither against the stone.

It had found them.

Somewhere distant to Heatwave's ears, Mayor Luskey shouted and swore. Agonizingly close to Heatwave's heart, the children screamed in terror.

"It's gonna eat us!" shrieked Frankie. Cody couldn't make a sound, plastered to the back of Heatwave's seats, eyes not moving from It. Heatwave shuddered, brakes on hard, facing down It.

It wailed and snapped at them, neck extended to its fullest, half an arms length from Heatwave's windscreen. Frankie shrieked again, and Heatwave, without thinking, flashed his brights in the Its eyes.

It snapped back, repelled, coiled tight to attack but cautious. Heatwave and It stood their grounds, watching each other, taught and waiting.

Cody began to mutter, repeating himself in a manic prayer, "It won't move if I watch it won't move if I watch it won't move if I watch-"

It wouldn't. Not if Heatwave was more interesting. Judging by Its complete disregard for the panicking Luskeys behind It, he could manage.

"Cody." Heatwave ordered. "Frankie. Get out of my cab."

"WHAT?" Frankie screamed. "WHY?"

"Because you're going to walk right past it." Heatwave jiggled his seats just a bit, urging the kids towards the door. "It'll come after me, not you."

"But it didn't go after you guys until Blades tried to help me and Dad." Frankie voice broke into a tiny whisper. "I don't want you to get eaten, I just met you."

"We'll catch up after. Go."

"Oh for crying out loud, there's kids in the Rescue Bot!" Mayor Luskey jumped out of his car just as the two children were exiting, throwing aside his golf clubs, portable DVD players, and neck pillows. "Sweetie, make room! We're going back for them!"

It perked at the Mayor's words, neck shifting slowly at the base to meet his-

"Don't even think about it, monster!"

It roared, mouth opening and opening until its head was nothing but teeth, all its fury directed at Heatwave. It squirmed in its stone trap, wires popping against the snagged bits of road. Heatwave transformed once Cody and Frankie were clear, turning up the brightness on his optics so It had something to look at. It brightened its eyes to match, energon flowing upwards into its head, eyes on him.

Cody and Frankie began to walk a wide circle, an imaginary line Frankie calculated to stay out of range of its neck.

Mayor Luskey pulled the car around, doors thrown open and arms outstretched, ready to catch up the kids and run.

Heatwave growled. "You should not exist."

It hissed at him, but didn't struggle, only quivered in place. Static electricity crackled from its tiny puncture wounds, bleeding energon dispersing in the rain.

"You should not be." He found his voice gaining volume as he spoke. "You were thrown together at the last minute out of parts we threw away! Cobbled up with the doctor's junk and our medical waste!"

Cody and Frankie stepped a little farther out of Heatwave's reach, and one optic followed them. The body made no move to catch them up. Heatwave shouted back to It, "I can't believe I was every afraid of you."

He laughed one loud bark, suppressing a manic giggle deep in his chest. It squirmed in its place, spooking Cody and Frankie to jump to the side. They kept moving, though, and Heatwave kept speaking.

"I can see bits of myself in you. You've got my broken neck, Boulder's corroded t-cog. You've got the Greene's trash pile practically written all over you. You're not anything to be afraid of, you're just parts."

Heatwave could feel his fear melting away, and then... then the kids passed its blind spot, and its face split down the middle, one half following the children, the other half trained on Heatwave. The half-face screamed on Heatwave's side, its once-dominant roar choked and spluttered out of a fractured voice box. Its energon

The Rescue Bot snarled and shouted, angry at the world for letting this thing exist. "You are all the worst parts of us and the humans! I wonder if you know that. My people, even the most hideous and monstrous of us are born with a divine spark from Primus himself, and you... you don't even have a name."

It barked, and in that shredded bark was a word. Heatwave didn't hear the word, refusing to, too confused to retort. Cody and Frankie stopped in place, nearly past Its shoulder, flinching.

Heatwave could only ask, "What?"

The Thing gurgled and coughed, and through for of will, spoke, "_**Iiiiiiiitt**_."

"Well... what do you know..." Heatwave snarled. "It talk itself to talk."

Cody and Frankie were at its shoulder blade. The Mayor's wife started the car. Luskey, soaking wet, stood ready at the car door, arms open.

Heatwave had to make It die. "It want a cracker? Or would It rather have a working face?"

It wrenched free an arm, and Heatwave dove for it. It caught his punching hand in a coil, spilling its tainted energon over his fingers, but the distraction worked. From his sensors, Heatwave felt the kids rushing into Mayor Luskey's arms and car and peeling away for the boat. The kids were safe. That was important. His mission was done.

It fought against him at every step. It was like fighting a fire hose, every moment wild and random, powerful but without thought. It screamed, and It aimed its screams directly into Heatwave's ears, sending his sensory system into shock and cutting precious seconds out of his response time. It tied off his vital energon veins and squeezed, digging into his shell and sawing off sections of armor. He felt its face open sideways and close around his head in a mockery of a mouth, tongue lashing against his teeth, ready to scoop into his throat and tear out his tanks.

Chase flew from the ground and punched it in the eye.

It was a well-ordered flurry of limbs. Chase pinned It down at the hip, Blades chopping off its arms at the root of the shoulder, Boulder stomped down on its neck with a wide foot. Pressing It down into the upturned concrete and earth, Heatwave instinctively tore at its torso, delving deep into its vital systems to shut it off for good.

Lying at the center, in a human battery core, was a fledgling spark. It shined, not in the natural blue of all Cybertronian life, but in the sickly violet of Dark Energon. It lurched and guttered in its casing, half wanting to escape and half wanting to snuff itself out. For only a moment, Heatwave felt horror, real horror, that this thing was beginning to be alive, sentient, aware of itself maiming and destroying...

Without thinking further, he closed his fist around the spark and squeezed.

It burst in his hands, oozed out through his fingers, and fizzled harmlessly into the soil. It simply stopped, locking in place, unmoving. Its eyes became flood lights again.

Lightning flashed, and thunder followed three seconds later.

Heatwave fell to the ground, arms around his friends, optics cast to the thing lying under them, dead.


	7. Morning

The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 7: Morning

Disclaimer: Still own nothing.

* * *

8 hours later, the island worked again. The rescue volunteers became the repair crew, headed by Doc Greene and ordered around by Kade Burns. What was left of The Thing was collected on flatbeds and tow trucks and brought to Doc Greene's laboratory. The Rescue Bots were gathered up and flown, towed, carried back to the fire house.

("How did you get here with a punctured leg, anyhow?" Heatwave asked Chase, the police car strewn about his shoulders.

Chase blushed. "Boulder... tossed me."

Heatwave would have smiled. He wasn't quite feeling ready for it yet.)

9 hours later, the cell phone towers were working again. Chief Burns called the Mayor, who told him that the kids were fine, sound asleep on the day bed in the foyer, good kids!, the family should visit more often, was the thing taken care of?, ("Yes, May-"), good!, keys to the city, maybe not, free frozen yogurt courtesy of the city, creepy thing, wasn't it?, ("Yes, May-"), darned creepy!, free frozen yogurt for life for the kids, maybe not for life, for the month, what month was it?, ("Um-"), nevermind, he was dead tired, talk to you later Charlie Burns, bye.

Chief Burns and Doctor Greene shared a look and figured would probably be a repeat of the first call if Doc called to check on Frankie.

10 hours later, the citizens slowly moved back onto the island, wondering why they were evacuated but too apathetic to ask. Cody and Frankie came home in a limousine courtesy of the Mayor. ("There was a TV in the back seat," Cody said. "We watched the Spongebob movie.") Hugs were shared between Cody and his family, hands were shook between the Mayor and the adults, and all the Burnses ran back inside before the Mayor could start talking again.

It all seemed so... easy. Like what had happened yesterday hadn't happened at all.

Then Cody went downstairs.

It was completely quiet. Boulder, Blades, and Heatwave sat huddled together on one sofa, shoulder snug together, television off, none of them moving. A chill went through Cody's heart, and he ran to the Rescue Bots's feet.

"Is Chase okay?"

"Injury to his hydraulics," Blades spoke, voice hollow and shocked. "He's just in the statis pod."

Cody breathed out in one big puff and let Heatwave pull him up into the collective Rescue Bot lap. "I was watching you guys from the boat. I saw the thing stop moving. Is it...?"

"Yeah," Heatwave replied. He pulled his hands close to himself, folding them under his arms, away from Cody. "It's dead."

"What'd they do to it?"

Boulder's hands moved gently as he spoke, all small movements and tiny twitches for emphasis. "I think I heard Graham say that Doc Greene was going to melt it all down and recycle it, but I can't be sure. I only heard one half of the phone call."

"But that's not important right now," chirped Blades, forcibly cheerful. "How are you? Did you enjoy your trip to the mainland?"

Cody sat down and crossed his legs, keeping his eyes on Heatwave's hands. They twitched. "The Mayor payed Frankie fifty dollars to install his stereo. She payed me ten dollars for keeping him busy while she worked, so... that was cool."

"That's good!" Blades laughed in two sharp bites before leaning back heavily on the couch, smile falling. "That's really good..."

Boulder similarly sagged against Heatwave's shoulder, while Heatwave didn't move, back upright and stiff. His optics went right over Cody's head, staring intently into the floor.

Cody got up and fell forward, hugging the back of Heatwave's hands tightly. "You'll be okay, guys."

Heatwave smiled at that, but couldn't make himself return the hug. The Thing's blood still weighed heavily on his hands.

Somewhere deep in the island, fed by geothermal heat, the parts slowly melted into so much slag, and Doctor Greene breathed a scorching, happy sigh of relief.

* * *

That's the end. Thank you!


End file.
